Originally a pic from the NES game Punch-Out, the picture dipected the events in between each tournament where Little Mac would jog through New York and his trainer, Doc Louis, would be leading him on a bike. One day, someone at Something Awful decided to take the picture and add the caption "Nigga stole my bike!" as a contribution to the photoshop contest of that week. This picture soon spread to YTMND, where it was placed on a web page with a sound clip of a person saying "Nigga stole my bike!" over and over again. Soon, variations were churned out almost daily, creating an Internet sensation that proved racism could still be funny...for a while.

A more popular variation involves the full animation of the scene accompanied by the music, with the infamous phrase mixed into the music.